Why do travelers prefer to book and pay online for their trips?

Last summer only 23% of travelers in Spain still booked some of their trips in a traditional travel agency. On the contrary, the rest of the trips were booked online, taking, for example, online travel agencies 32% of trips and online price comparators 26%.

Undoubtedly, the price has had much to do with this change to the online model, which thanks to the reduction of infrastructure and personnel costs has made travel much more affordable. However, there are other factors that have influenced this change, such as the convenience of searching and comparing options from the sofa, quick access to offers and the tranquility of carrying everything booked and even paid from home.

We know that the safest form of payment when traveling is the online pre-payment, since it avoids having to carry cash or face technical problems once arrived at the destination. And travelers know this and for that reason tend more and more to opt for this format. However, paying for services without having reached the destination is not everyone’s cup of tea, so, what is the solution, then?

Tokenization of cards, essential for OTAs

The tokenization of cards is the perfect solution for the proposed situation, since it allows to manage reservations but paying later without having to ask for the card or cash again. This is possible thanks to the fact that this technology converts the payment data of the card into a completely indecipherable code that is the one that arrives to the business in order to make the reservation.

Subsequently, this same indecipherable link with the payment data will allow the collection to be processed when the service is enjoyed or even in situations of no show or new charges, without having to ask the customer for the card again and without having handled sensitive data at any time.

What about hotels and tourist businesses?

Customers do not always resort to OTAs to book stays and activities, they can also resort directly to the web pages of hotels and tourist businesses, so it’s important that this type of business doesn’t depend exclusively on third-party websites and endeavors in have your own site optimized. Tokenization is also the best option in this case, so to enjoy all its advantages it’s more than advisable to opt for a payment gateway that works with this technology.

In PaynoPain we offer a payment gateway service specialized in OTAs, tourism businesses and hotels that includes card tokenization and many other advantages that are perfect for this type of companies, such as 3D Secure or PCI-PROXY, which also make it easier to comply with the PSD2 from now on. Ask us about how to implement our payment gateway on your website and business.